Association for the
Advancement of Computing in Education
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Celebrating 30+ Years of
Service to the IT in Education / E-Learning Community
Invited Speaker
In 1996, in the midst of the global multimedia mania, the Malaysian SuperCorridor (MSC) was established (Mahathir, 1999). Its aim was to transform Malaysia into a knowledge-based economy to satisfy the demands of its growing IT industries. At the heart of the MSC is the Multimedia University (MMU), the nation’s first private university specialising in high-tech and multimedia education.
The Malaysian educational system, at that time, was practicing teacher-centred methods of instruction. In 2000, the then Secretary-General of the Malaysian Ministry of Education stated that “...physical classrooms and traditional learning evolve from static to dynamic ones…” and for teachers to “…incorporate technology into their process of teaching and learning, and thus pursuing traditional goals with new fervour and success” (Mat, 2000).
Institutions of higher learning here in Malaysia started meeting those challenges by integrating multimedia into various teaching and learning environments such as storytelling (Norhayati & Siew, 2004), problem-based learning (Neo & Neo, 2001, 2005; Hong, Lai & Holton, 2003), web-based courses (Rohaida & Kamariah, 2000; Hong, Abang Ekhsan & Zaimuarifuddin, 2005, Neo, 2005), and in e-learning applications (Lee, 2005; Suraya, 2005). Since 2000, through the use of multimedia facilities in MMU, we have embarked upon several research projects that investigated the impact of using multimedia in various teaching and learning environments. Such teaching and learning strategies have ranged from multimedia-mediated interactive courseware (Neo & Neo, 2002, 2004, 2007) and web-based education (Neo & Neo 2002, 2003, 2005), both underpinned by strong pedagogical frameworks and integrated into teacher-centered as well as student-centred learning environments, to more constructivist-based frameworks of learning (Neo & Neo, 2001, 2002,, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010; Neo, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007), which included project-based learning, authentic learning, problem-solving learning (PSL), collaborative learning and cooperative learning. By effectively marrying multimedia technology and curriculum, we have successfully incorporated these current and modern approaches to education that enabled students to become active learners, within both classroom and online environments. Through our 11 years of experience in these various research projects, we have developed several teaching and learning frameworks in the University. This talk will provide insights to the development of such teaching and learning environments (with 2 examples highlighted) within Malaysian curriculum-driven classrooms and discuss the successes and challenges of such frameworks.
Dr. Mai Neo holds an MA in Corporate Communications and a Ph.D in Creative Multimedia and has over 15 years experience in multimedia technologies. She was trained in multimedia in the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1994, and was an Authorised Training Provider (ATP) for Macromedia (now Adobe) Director and Authorware from 1995 to 2000, conducting multimedia training for multinational corporations, government agencies and institutions of higher learning in the Malaysia. Mai was a regular multimedia columnist for Malaysian IT newspapers and magazines from 1995 to and written over 500 articles on multimedia. She is currently Associate Professor with the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, and the Director of R&D and Collaborations, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya, Malaysia. She has also published over 75 international journal and conference publications and published 9 books on multimedia and serves on several international journal Editorial Review Boards.
